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Dr. Trish Leigh Podcast
Episode #192: The Dopamine Illusion — Why Pleasure Isn’t the Same as Joy
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Your brain has been hacked. It thinks pleasure equals happiness, and that is the biggest illusion of our time. I'm Dr. Trish Leigh. Welcome back to the podcast, cognitive neuroscientist and your hostess with the mostest today, Breaking down the dopamine illusion. Your brain has been conditioned to think dopamine equals happiness, but it is wrong. And I want to break it down with you today, but first, I want to remind you that I'm renaming the nonprofit organization with the help of my son, Declan. But of course, everything takes longer than you think it's going to, so you can currently find it at its old name, pornbrain prevention.org we are on a mission to help young people never get trapped in the chaos of explicit matter and doom scrolling and screen compulsion altogether. So if you'd like to help that mission, please go over to pornbrainprevention.org help the cause. I match every donation. Okay, so let us dive in. What is the dopamine trap? I want to start with the truth. Let us start with a truth bomb. Okay. That dopamine is a little chemical in your brain, and it's designed to whisper at you to go get it. And that whisper is supposed to drive you towards not only survival, but in my mind, thrival, it's supposed to send you into the world, into your life, into a job or a vocation that gives you purpose and passion and contributes to this tiny marble floating around in outer space that contributes to humanity. That's what dopamine is supposed to whisper. Even though it might be difficult, go after it. It's supposed to whisper that to you. When you feel that spark of connection with a person across the room, you think to yourself, I don't know if he or she would be interested, but go for it. That's what dopamine's supposed to do. You think to yourself, hmm, I want to learn how to rock climb. But rocks are high. That dopamine whispers, go for it. But if you've got caught up in screen time too much or at too high of intensity, especially explicit matter, that dopamine might not be whispering at you anymore. It might be screaming at you, and it's telling you, go get more of it from whence it came. And where it came from is harming you. It's damaging your brain. So here's the truth. Dopamine is supposed to lead to happiness and pleasure, but it's been derailed. Your brain has been hijacked. Your dopamine is taking you into chaos. That's the illusion you think it's making you happy in the moment because that's what that chemical's designed to do. But in a world of supernormal stimuli, from explicit matter to endless scrolling instant notifications, that whisper never shuts down. It becomes a scream. So every single swipe, every single click, every, like, every fire emoji, it spikes your dopamine. And the more it spikes, the more desensitized your brain becomes. You need more and more and more and more and more stimulation just to feel, quote, unquote, normal. It's tolerance building. It's escalation. That's the illusion. Once you start chasing pleasure, you think it's joy, but in reality, your brain is running on depletion. So let's talk about the science of this illusion. When dopamine takes over, it literally hijacks the brain's reward circuits, the mesolimbic pathways. It's the same system that's supposed to motivate you for connection, for creativity, for contribution. But this overstimulation reroutes those circuits. Instead of striving toward purpose, now your brain is fixated on the novelty. The next image, the next hit, the next high. So meanwhile, serotonin, which is the chemical of contentment, it plummets. And oxytocin, the chemical of trust and love, it fades. Those three are supposed to be combined in the happiness trifecta, but instead, you're stuck in what I call the dopamine illusion. That illusion will make you think you're pursuing happiness, but neurologically, you're running from a place of emptiness. That's why willpower doesn't work. We talked about that in the last episode. That your brain actually wants coherence for discipline. White knuckling and willpower won't work. You can't out think a hijacked reward system. You have to rewire it, my friend. That's what we're talking about here. Okay, so we're talking about enlightenment. Yeah, I know it's a big word and it's probably overused. We're talking about self actualization, which I love these theories. Wayne Dyer, Maslow. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which I break down in my book Mind Over Explicit Matter. That hierarchy of needs at the top is self actualization, which some people consider it a luxury, but if you're at the bottom, you're actually stuck in survival. So when you're stuck in the bottom, you are just trying to meet basic needs. And you know what explicit matter does? It keeps you stuck in a very distorted way of the basic, basic need of reproduction. But obviously there's no hope of actual reproduction with explicit matter. But your brain's tricked. This dopamine illusion leads you not on a conscious level, but on a neurological level, to keep going back and staying in this survival mode. But it prevents you from your full potential. It prevents you from going to that higher, divinely inspired coherence aspect of your higher self. Instead, you stay in the lower ego, body oriented, not spirit and self oriented. You stay in a distorted appetite. It craves a sparkler all the time. The intensity and the artificiality. When your higher self craves a sunrise and a sunset, we know sunrises and sunsets, they burn longer and with less intensity. But we know that's the happiness trifecta. It balances those neurochemicals. So pleasure's fast, but it's fleeting. It leads to pain. Joy is slower but in fact sustaining. So when you're living from a life of overstimulation, you're edging that source energy and that divinely inspired higher self version of yourself out. You're disconnecting from the very rhythm of, of a healthy life. That rhythm in your brain is called peak alpha. Peak alpha is the hum of your brain at rest. I've seen tens of thousands, over 50,000 brain maps. When I pivoted my work into explicit matter. One day, I learned about porn from a friend of mine. Was, I figured out was addicted to porn. And you know what happened in that day, if you know me. All my other work fell by the wayside and I had to figure out this porn thing where. Well, since then, what I figured out is that hum is diminished, it's dimmed. That spark inside, it's called peak alpha. It's supposed to run at faster than 9.5 Hz. The perfect hum for calm focus, for rest, for relaxation, for peak performance. And instead, now that hum is down at 9, I see it below 8 Hertz in many of the people that I work with. Literally, explicit matter is sucking that life rhythm out, out of people's brains. It might be sucking that life rhythm out of your brain. So this is what we're talking about here is that the very rhythm of life itself is being extinguished by the artificial fire emoji of explicit matter and screens. But don't give up hope because you know, you know me, pragmatic hope. The brain has neuroplasticity. When it really gets locked into this dopamine illusion, it gets locked up in neuro rigidity. I see that in people's brain maps. All the time too locked up. People think they're locked in trauma. People think they're locked in anxiety. They're actually locked in the dopamine illusion. And when we can free them up from the dopamine illusion, these other things subside also. So when you regulate your nervous system and you reconnect with that still sacred current inside of you, your entire brain chemistry changes and your body chemistry. That's why for people who are struggling, struggling with sexual arousal dysfunction, sad, as I call it, especially ed, it comes from this lowered peak alpha. That's what drained brain is. I've talked about it here a lot. This is what we're talking about. So if you feel low motivation and general malaise and depressed and you have sexual arousal dysfunction, that makes you feel all stressed out but exhausted, you're operating from strained brain and drained brain, not from that sacred rhythm, what I call sacred science. When your nervous system's completely regulated and you're aligned with the version of yourself you want to be, it leads you to integrity and it leads you to confidence. My husband, he. How do I gently put this? We're probably deep enough into the podcast that only people who really know me are listening still. Anyways, you know how that goes. But, you know, lately my husband has. He's misguided, first of all, and if he was here, he'd admit it now. But he was saying that he thinks I'm being more cocky. He didn't say that word. He thinks I'm abrasive. And I'm like, babe, I'm not abrasive. I'm just more confident. But compassionately and empathetically, I'm not going after anybody. Like, he's sensing it as attack energy and. But it's just because I would have deferred my confidence to him in the past, especially back. I said to him, I've worked really hard to come out of a codependent relationship with you. So I used to defer to you, but now I've grabbed the reins on my own life and I'm walking around confidently but lovingly. Nobody else is miffed. Everybody else thinks I'm, you know, kicking some booty in life. They People comment all the time that I feel, that I look and I seem and I feel calm and confident to them, you know, not overly confident, not cocky, but it's kind of rubbing him the wrong way because he has to increase his confidence, which he's in the middle of doing. But this is what happens when the spark comes back. You know, I've sleep Better than I've ever slept. I. Like we talked about last year. No vice November. I've. I've barely been drinking, you know, no need to drink when you feel good. It's amazing. Same thing with screens and explicit matter. No need for it when you feel great. This isn't about giving something up. I had that in the journey after Novice November last year, you know, and I told you, my friends and I used to go out and party a lot. That was kind of my identity for the longest time. Like work super hard all week long so I was blind from exhaustion and then spend Friday night out grabbing a bunch of drinks. Now I don't work blind to exhaustion throughout the week and I spend Friday chilling, big chilling with my family. We played we again last week. I crushed Seamus and Zeke in Wii bowling. I think I've always been a decent bowler. Not that I bowl often, but this is what happens when I'm not trying not to drink. I'm just more interested in doing other things. This is the transformation ready for you. And I see it. The proof is in the pudding. So, you know, I chase success and it led me to feel this exhaustion and you might be doing the same thing. And then now screens have become the way for people to take the edge off in that dopamine illusion. All right, so let's talk about the brain, body, mind, spirit. So as you regulate your brain, you come back to a place of, you know, what you want for your life. I've been looking into the research because I'm working on my next book. And I'm thinking of it as super normal living right now. Not superhuman, but super normal. It's a double entendre. You know me, I love a double entendre. When you're in the dopamine illusion, you're chasing supernormal stimuli. So the solution isn't to necessarily stop chasing the dopamine in the supernormal stimuli. It's to start creating a supernormal life. Then you don't need the supernormal stimuli. And that's what I'm talking about. By creating a balanced life filled with love and with connection and healthy food and exercise and downtime and all the hobbies you enjoy doing and sitting with people that you like being with. That's super normal living. But you have to figure it out for yourself what that looks like. Then you won't need the dopamine illusion anymore. So let's move into what your brain hacks are for the day. Okay. First, I know you're not going to Want to hear this one? But you have to figure out how to have a digital dopamine fast or a digital dopamine detox. This is number one. At the same time, you want a dopamine stack in your life, so find the times when you're most susceptible to either giving into explicit matter or screen time in general. In those moments now, make sure you're moving towards one or more things in your real life that give you healthy dopamine from a healthy source. This is what I call a pleasure pathway reset. It's the name of the digital masterclass that I offer. Because of this reason, another double entendre is we're actually regulating and rewiring the pleasure pathways, the circuitry in your brain that now will lead you toward your life, not toward explicit matter. When we regulate your brain, when we reinstill that sacred hum of peak alpha, you don't need pleasure from the screen. At the same time, you are rewiring those pathways in your life. You're taking new roads. You're taking the road towards we bowling instead of towards another drink. That's the roads in your life. So that's the double entendre where we are rewiring the circuitry and we are resetting the actual choices, the behaviors of your mind and body in your day, your week in your life. That's number one. Number two, get a journal. Get a pleather journal. Like I've told you. You can get them for less than $10 at Walmart or on Amazon. I have a lot of them. I get these brown ones. And my husband asked me this morning for a piece of paper. He's like, just rip out a page of one of your journals. Because there's literally six of them near me right now. I'm like, no. Amen. I'm not ripping my journal. Are you crazy? Because they're sacred to me. So in the morning, write three goals, the three things you want to accomplish that day. Make sure they're intentional and they lead you towards the life that you want. Not grind, not hustle, hustle, not busyness, intention. So remember that. Write it down, three things, not 3,000. And then at night, do a gratitude. I call it a thousand gifts. Every night or the next morning, if I'm busy that night, I look for three gratitudes from the day before. I can tell you one right now that I'm going to write later. My son Seamus has gone off to college. This man has shown up a couple times in the middle of the night. He likes to drive in the night. So you know what happened this morning? I'm on my way up to my office, where I am right now, and I see a pair of pants on his bedroom floor. The door's cracked open. And then I peek in and I look, he's in his bed. Showed up in the middle of the night. That man won't be up for a while. But I think it's lovely seeing my precious child laying in his bed, not knowing he was coming. It is such a joy, it's such a gratitude. And I paused for a moment, just taking it in. The fact that that beautiful man is here and I get to see him today. That's what I'm talking about. That's not a hit of pleasure. That is moment and moments of joy. That's what makes life amazing. Write them down. Gratitude, a thousand gifts. What you will do is retrain your brain towards fulfillment and satisfaction. Not just pleasure, because at the end of the day, being caught up in explicit matter, it's serving you in the one moment after you are done, it's not serving you at all, it's derailing you from the life that you want. Looking at someone you love and letting it sink into your core, that is actually what will enhance your peak alpha, that sacred rhythm in your nervous system. That's how you will feel fulfilled. But you have to train your brain to do it. It's about the training. Number three, Stillness. Practice. You have to get some stillness. Yesterday was such a busy day and. And my youngest precious child, Saoirse, got her learner's permit for driving on Monday. So you know what's happened. I drive her around a lot to go to the barn because she rides horses. Now, that child's been driving me around. It's only been two days. But in the car with her driving, I can't relax when I drive. I. I figured it out. I've been driving for, like. I forget what it was, 36 years or something, which is crazy. I don't know if that's right. Yeah, I think that is right. So when I drive, it's muscle memory. When she drives, I am on red alert. Last night, my brain was so cooked, I couldn't even tell you. And I'm like, why am I so cooked? First of all, it's been busy. Second, I. The times I would normally recalibrate driving, listening to music. Now I'm looking around, making sure we don't crash, so we have to go on a longer journey. Today she wants to drive. I'm letting her drive for a short bit and then I'm driving the rest because I will be fried. So that's the stillness practice. Maybe you can do it when you're driving. I do it every morning. Honestly. I sit. I have a morning routine that I won't give up for the life of me. When you slow down, that's when your discipline of getting stillness and quiet will turn your brain toward flow state. Your peak alpha will boost up and you will be able to have more creative thoughts. You'll feel calmer, you'll feel the peace. You will feel your body settle. I woke up feeling so much better than yesterday. I couldn't believe how bad I felt last night. Don't worry. We've gotten one hour, one and a half hours, and we only have to do 60 of them together. And she's my last child. It's a cruel joke in North Carolina that a parent has to drive for 60 hours with each of their children. Because if you have five children, that's 300 hours in the car as a passenger with a teen driver. Talk about stressful, right? Okay, so I want you to remember this dopamine fast. You're going to do a micro version. You're going to detox your brain from the chaos, and you're going to reset those pleasure pathways back into your life. You're going to journal for joy. You're going to set goals that you can accomplish with intention. You're going to celebrate the gratitudes. And number three, you're going to practice some stillness. You're going to shift that brain into the default mode network where you can feel calmer in flow state. Boost up that peak alpha, feel peace. Okay? So now here's the thing. Dopamine is not the enemy. This illusion that we're talking about, it's just an illusion, right? Illusions can't be enemies. They can't harm you. It's your divine self, that energy inside that has become misdirected when it got misdirected. This isn't a passive state. What happened was your brain got miswired to keep going back into this dopamine illusion. But poof, we can poof this away. When you train your brain back into balance, pleasure becomes purpose again. It's not addictive, but it's aligned. If you're looking for help, please go over to Dr. Trishleigh.com. we can do your brain map. I can show you we can spend time together. I can show you exactly what's going on in there. Looking at the dysfunction, looking at your peak alpha, you might be surprised to find you're stuck in drained brain. So I want you to remember. Don't chase the sparklers. You'll get burnt. Don't do it. Instead, wait for the sunrise. It will be worth it. Joy. Real joy is what happens when your brain finally remembers home. All right. Thanks for listening. And I want you to always remember to control your brain, or it will control you. I'll see you next time.